http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheForgottenWays/~3/308559964/
Having defined the function/roles of the apostolic person, we can now look at how apostolic ministry exerts its influence. Part of the resistance to the reception of apostolic ministry in our churches has been because at times when people who claim to be apostles have assumed that this involved a dictatorial approach to the leadership of the church. All too often, this has resulted in a disempowering of God’s people, and instead of seeing them mature and grow in the faith; they basically remain childlike and powerless, dependent on the autocratic and overwhelming paternal power of the ‘apostle.’ This is both a distortion and misrepresentation of authentic apostolic ministry. Apostolic ministry is authenticated by suffering and empowerment, not by claims of positional leadership with its institutional levers.
In our day I believe that the predominant, top-down, CEO concept of leadership has co-opted the apostolic so that many who claim apostolic title actually function like CEO’s. In the Scriptures the Suffering Servant/Jesus image informs and qualifies the apostolic role, not that of the Chief Executive Officer. Apostolic ministry draws its authority and power primarily from the idea of service, calling, and from moral, or spiritual, authority and not from positional authority. Perhaps a useful way of exploring the nature of apostolic authority is identify the distinctive form of leadership involved and see how this creates authority.
In a relationship based on ‘inspirational’ or ‘moral’ leadership both leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality by engaging each other on the basis of shared values, calling, and identity. It involves a relationship between leaders and followers in which each influences the other to pursue common objectives, with the aim of inspiring followers into becoming leaders in the own right. In other words, influence runs both ways. Inspirational leadership ultimately becomes genuinely moral when it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspiration of both leaders and led, thus having a transformational effect on both. In this view, followers are persuaded to take action without threatening them or offering material incentives but rather by appealing to their values. They use moral persuasion rather than material reward to influence their followers, appealing rather to higher values and calling. This can be clearly seen in the way Jesus develops his disciples as well Paul’s relationship with Timothy, Titus, and the other members of his apostolic team. But it is forms the basis of his letters to the churches.
Perhaps we can best call this type of influence ‘greatness.’ To be a great leader in this sense is to inspire, to evoke, and to nurture something correspondingly great out of those who follow. Through an integrated life, great leaders remind their followers of what they can become if they too based their lives on a compassionate notion of humanity framed by higher moral vision of the world in which we live. We seldom call a leader with significant technical or managerial ability ‘great.’ We don’t build statues to commemorate great bureaucrats, do we? And it is with understanding in mind that we can identify spiritual ‘greatness’ as the basic substance that provides genuine apostolic form of leadership with its authority. And it is the strongest form of leadership available because it awakens the human spirit, focuses it, and holds it together by managing the shared meaning. Like many leaders in the Chinese underground church, it has the power to hold vast movements together without much external structure. It’s the kind of leadership mythically reflected in the William Wallace character in the movie Braveheart. A man who the people willingly followed, not because they ought, or that he had some official position (he didn’t) but because he reminded them of their right to freedom and helped them obtain it at the cost of his life.
